My Lords, the whole compulsory purchase issue is a complex and niche part of the law, as has been well explained in the debate today. I am hugely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for setting out his amendment in detail.
I have some interests to declare. It is 50 years—yes—since I was last involved in compulsory purchase procedures as a land agent, and the law has moved slightly since then. But I do remember how fiendishly complicated it was; just when I thought I had got my head around it, I moved jobs and went off to do something else.
The nub of the Government’s proposals is to change a long-settled aspect of compulsory purchase in this country. It was put into words by Lord Justice Scott in Horn v Sunderland. He said that the landowner
“has the right to be put, so far as money can do it, in the same position as if his land had not been taken from him”.
That tenet—that vital basic principle for compulsory purchase—is now being demolished by the Government, with the support of the Labour Front Bench.
It is now clear that there is considerable blue water on this issue between us and those who want to deprive a landowner or somebody of the rightful value of their property. It can start with land but it is a slippery slope. Once it is established that somebody is not getting the full market value for their land, and that the state can take that from them, it will go on into other issues that affect people. I deeply regret that my Government have headed down this road. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to explain why she wishes to destroy that principal tenet of compulsory purchase.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, talked about the process of consultation. He was far too kind to the Government about that. On the previous amendment, interestingly, my noble friend Lady Bloomfield said that the Government could not accept it because a consultation would have to be had to go through it in detail before they could possibly come to Parliament. We come to this amendment and now we find that there was a consultation process, but the Government introduced it after the Bill had been read for a first time in another place; not only that, but they put down amendments contrary to the consultation process. So those who answered the consultation process were not actually answering the question that the Government are now posing.
If this was not so serious, it would actually be quite a funny skit about how badly the Government are behaving. This is an appalling way to govern. It reduces confidence among all the professionals in this area—and if it reduces the confidence of these professionals, it will not be long before the Government start reducing the confidence of other professionals.
The government amendments to the Land Compensation Act and the Acquisition of Land Act change significantly the basis of that consultation procedure. We have now got the results of the consultation—merely a week before we came to discuss it, and I think that was partly due to the very useful meeting that we had with the Minister’s officials, for which I am extremely grateful. At that meeting I posed them the question, “When are you going to publish the results of the consultation?” There was a scratching of heads and the answer, “Let’s see; we’ll go back to the department and think about it”. I am very grateful to the officials for having thought about it, but it proves that the consultation was a total waste of everybody’s time and a lot of paper.
Furthermore, the Government have asked the Law Commission to look at the whole of the compulsory purchase procedure laws. I spoke to the Law Commission this morning on this. It has started work on it; it aims to produce its report and the proposed Bill in 2025. Would it not be better, before the Government tread into this minefield of compulsory purchase, to wait for the Law Commission to come forward with its report before disturbing this issue?
I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister three questions. Nearly all schemes that are affected by compulsory purchase will include a developer; the local authority does not have the resources or the ability to do it on its own. So if a developer is involved, how can the Government justify allowing the developer to make a profit? As the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has just said, it is something in the region of 20%.
I was a developer in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and all our schemes had a minimum of 20% when we started them. How can you justify giving a developer 20% profit when the landowner is not getting the market value for the land? That is a severe infringement of human rights. I appreciate that, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, the planning procedure is very expensive. If I remember rightly, I read in the papers yesterday that the Government have spent £800 million so far on costs regarding the proposed new Dartford crossing—and not a spade has been put in the ground yet. That is expensive, and it is equally expensive, but on a lesser scale, for landowners; proportionately, it is about the same.
If there is going to be a direction under the proposed legislation, will the local authority have to prove that the development could not proceed unless the land was bought at existing use value, not at market value? If the answer to that is no, then this is state robbery. If the answer to it is yes, my third question to my noble friend the Minister is whether the local authority will be required to publish detailed costs of the proposed development. It is only by getting the detailed costs that one will be able to challenge the efficacy of the proposal. One will need a considerable amount of detail from the developer and the local authority to show that compulsory purchase is the only method by which that proposed development could proceed.
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If the answer to my questions is no, as I said, that becomes state robbery. If it is yes, no one will enter into any scheme with developers. Developers are not going to take up options on land and the supply of land for social and affordable housing will dry up, as it has done in the past. This is cyclic. I have now seen it twice in my lifetime: Governments wish to encourage something and think they are doing it, either through the rent Acts or land supply, but the result is completely the opposite; the land supply dries up and there is less of what they and we all want at the end of the day —more social and affordable housing; and then a future Government have to unwind it and start the process all over again.
If the result is going to be as dire as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and I fear and the supply of land is going to dry up, why are the Government undertaking this measure? This is far
too complex and detailed an issue to be tackled in the way that it is, and the consequences are going to be huge and very political.